Kylie Minogue’s new single drops amid stunning revelation about big break
Kylie Minogue’s latest song, Tension, has been launched around the world as a new documentary reveals her shock life-changing move. Listen to the song here.
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Kylie’s lusty new single single Tension is a steamy what-happened-next, after the 55-year-old’s hook-up at the club on her global smash Padam Padam.
The retro-future song delivers on the “unabashed pleasure-seeking, seize-the-moment” vibe of her upcoming album Tension.
“Oh, my god/Touch me right there/Almost there, touch me right there,” she instructs her new lover in the chorus.
Minogue has celebrated the hedonism and euphoria of club culture through her post-millennial repertoire but Tension amps up the sex factor.
Opening with a classic house piano hook, the song presses all the buttons that fans of dance pop and electronic pioneers from Giorgio Moroder to Daft Punk would immediately recognise.
Whether the album’s title track can match the global takeover of her current hit, which became a summer anthem in the northern hemisphere, will be determined by its take-up on TikTok and its video, which was also directed by acclaimed British director Sophie Muller who created the stunning red-soaked dancefest of Padam Padam.
The Australian pop icon took to Instagram to share the news with her three million followers the day before its release.
“Baby break the TENSION,” Minogue wrote.
“My brand new single TENSION is available to stream now! Official video drops tomorrow!”
The track sees Minogue channelling inspiration from both ’90s house music and ‘00s club classics.
The dance-inspired tune fits next to the hints Minogue has been dropping about the upcoming album (also called Tension), which will be released on September 22, saying it will be inspired by electronic music and ’90s house.
“I can’t give too much away, but there’s some 2000s electro, ’90s house and what I like to call emoto-pop,” Minogue told The Irish News.
“I can’t wait to share this with fans and enter the next era of music and live performance.”
Earlier this week, the 55-year-old pop icon teased her fans that the new song was on its way.
“LOVERS!!! New music is coming!!” the Australian icon wrote in the caption of her Instagram post. “The single TENSION is yours 31st August. Are you ready??”
Minogue’s previous single, Padam Padam, went viral, resulting in her first ever top 10 hit on Billboard‘s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart.
It also gave the singer her first UK Top 10 song in 12 years, and was considered a summer anthem in the northern hemisphere.
It comes as a new documentary reveals how Minogue got her first big break.
The new documentary film about Michael Gudinski‘s life goes behind-the-scenes on how the Godfather of Aussie rock finally agreed to add the soap superstar to his roster, forging a three decades-strong friendship and music partnership.
Gudinski did not want to sign Kylie Minogue to his iconic label Mushroom Records and the Neighbours actor knew it.
“It was probably helpful that I was unaware of anything about the music industry,” Minogue says in Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story.
“Had I known Mushroom was the house of rock‘n’roll and that on paper, I would have no place there, maybe it wouldn’t have ended up that way. But as I was as green as …”
Mushroom’s then talent scout Amanda Pelman and Gudinski’s general manager Gary Ashley lobbied the music mogul, who had signed Jimmy Barnes, Hunters and Collectors, Split Enz and Paul Kelly, to bring the fledgling pop star into the fold.
“Amanda Pelman and Gary Ashley badgered Michael Gudinski to listen to this demo (of Locomotion),” Minogue says.
But it would be the opinions of his London-based niece and nephew which would determine Minogue‘s pop star future with Mushroom.
Neighbours and the show’s stable of fresh, young talent, became wildly popular in the UK when the soap began airing there in late 1986.
“Was I sceptical about it? Yes,” Gudinski says in the film.
“Fortunately, I went to London and said to my niece and nephew ‘Do you think I should sign Kylie Minogue?’ and they didn’t know what I was talking about.
“And I said ‘I mean Charlene’ and they started screaming and yelling.”
What unfolded was a seismic shift in Mushroom Records from the house of rock to the home of pop music icon Kylie Minogue.
Minogue’s debut single Locomotion claimed No. 1 in 1987 for seven weeks in Australia and launched her stellar career in the UK and US.
“The palace revolt at Mushroom Records when this teeny tiny thing from soap opera land came in and hogged the No. 1 spot in the charts for 10 weeks or something … yes, I am sure there were a few people out to smother me,” Minogue says in the film.
The Ego documentary, which opens in cinemas this week, also reveals how the success of another unlikely Australian pop star in the UK proved pivotal in the fortunes of the great Australian independent label.
Gudinski was facing a financial crisis with his UK operations and decided to have one more shot at launching Peter Andre‘s debut hit Mysterious Girl in the lucrative pop market there.
“Thank god we had one more go and I had the guts to put up that last bit of money,” Gudinski says in the film.
“And Peter Andre, after releasing (Mysterious Girl) a third time went to No.1.”
Originally published as Kylie Minogue’s new single drops amid stunning revelation about big break
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